Effectiveness of mHealth Interventions in Improving Medication Adherence Among People with Hypertension: a Systematic Review.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This study aims to systematically review existing evidence on the effectiveness of mobile health technology (mHealth) interventions in addressing medication adherence among people with hypertension. RECENT FINDINGS: Twenty-one studies of mHealth interventions were included in the final review after systematic searching and screening of publications from 2000 to 2017 in PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase. Key features of the mHealth interventions include high intervention intensity, multifactorial components, and patient-centered approaches with tailored content and interaction. All studies found tendencies to improvement in medication adherence, but only 12 studies reported that the improvements were statistically significant in the intervention groups compared with the control groups. Twelve studies also found that mHealth interventions were beneficial for blood pressure control. None of the studies was conducted in a low-income country. Our systematic review found evidence that mHealth interventions improved medication adherence and blood pressure control among people with hypertension. However, most studies were small in sample size and short in study duration, and not all results were statistically significant. Future research should focus on investigating the sustainability and generalizability of mHealth interventions.

Removal of cadmium by bioflocculant produced by Stenotrophomonas maltophilia using phenol-containing wastewater.

Bioflocculants have been applied in numerous applications including heavy metals removal. A major bottleneck for commercial application of bioflocculant is its high production cost. Phenol-containing wastewater are abundantly available. However, the toxic phenol inhibited the microbial activities in the subsequent fermentation processes. Consequently, strains that can secrete phenol-degrading enzymes and simultaneously produce bioflocculants through directly degrading the phenol are of academic and practical interests. A phenol-degrading strain, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia ZZC-06, which can produce the bioflocculant MBF-06 using phenol-containing wastewater, was isolated in this study. The effects of culture conditions including initial pH, dissolved oxygen, phenol concentration, inoculum size, and temperature on MBF-06 production were analyzed. The experimental results showed that over 90% flocculating activity was achieved when the phenol was used as a carbon source and 4.99 g/L of MBF-06 was achieved under the optimized condition: 2.0% dissolved oxygen, 800 mg/L phenol concentration, 10% inoculum size, an initial pH of 6.0, and a temperature of 30 °C. The bioflocculant MBF-06 contained 71.2% polysaccharides and 27.9% proteins. The feasibility of cadmium removal using MBF-06 was evaluated. The highest flocculating efficiency for cadmium was 81.43%. This study shows for the first time that Stenotrophomonas maltophilia ZZC-06 can directly convert phenol into a bioflocculant, which can be used to effectively remove cadmium.